Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Does "Limited Edition" limit your thoughts?

How many times as consumers do we see the words “limited
edition” on products or signs? Sellers and shops are very clever in using just
these two words to boost their sales. Letting buyers know that a product is “limited
edition” uses the persuasion technique of scarcity. When people realise that
something is scarce or rare it makes them more willing to buy it because it
increases its perceived value. As humans
we believe if something is rare then it must be more valuable, and by not
having something that is rare or “limited edition” feelings of frustration can
be created and imply the self is lacking in some way.

An experiment by Worchel, Lee and Adewole (1975)
demonstrates the effect of scarcity being persuasive. Participants were asked
to rate the attractiveness and value of cookies that were either in abundance
or were scarce. The results are summarised in Table 1 below.

They found that the cookies that were scarce were rated
as more valuable in cost. Interestingly, they also found that when the supply
of cookies changed from abundant to scarce, they were rated more valuable than
they were if they were always scarce. By possessing something that is scarce,
we feel special as we are one of the lucky few people who managed to get our
hands on this limited edition product!

Next time you manage to get or miss out on a limited
edition item, see if scarcity is behind how you're feeling.